I took last week off during the lazy days of Summer. I’ll be posting only a few times a week until September and the kids are off to school.

For today, let’s take a look at the importance of styling.

If you are a going to a photoshoot, no matter who you are or what your need, styling is very important for a few reasons:

You look great after pro pampers your face and hair

It makes the photographer’s or retoucher’s job so much easier when post processing

If you are a model, male or female, and you can do your own styling, you will sometimes get hired over other models who can’t do this. So as budgets shrink, learning to do it yourself is beneficial.

Now on to hair, makeup, and nails.

For hair, if you are doing a concept shoot or beauty shoot that requires you to have crazy hair, then keep it simple and clean but add body so if a fan is added you have the volume to move around.

For makeup, stick to neutral tones that enhance your eyes and overall tone. Again, unless you are doing something specific, keep it simple and elegant.

Nails are a pet peeve of mine. Keep them clean, manicured, and use a neutral or light tone color on them so they disappear in the image. Don’t arrive to your shoot or job with broken nails or chipped neon purple nails. If your hands wind up in the image, you’ll be happy you had your nails done and ready for the shoot.

Here is a proof of a shot I did a while back.

Notice how the tones of her lips, face, and around the eyes are even and neutral. Her hair has had a blowout at a salon so that there is volume to it, even though you can’t see too much of it. But most importantly look at her nails. They are in great shape and the color on them blends with her skin tone, so they disappear in the image and don’t detract from her face:

Because her skin is evenly toned, her hair is controlled with product, and her nails blend perfectly, retouching is easy.

Here is a final retouch done by my retoucher:

If you are learning to style yourself, here is a guide I got from InStyle Magazine that will help you choose colors for your skin tone:

I’m posting this as I just saw this on the BH Photo website while shopping for another California Sunbounce item.

If you know me or have taken any of my workshops or been to any of my presentations, you know I am a huge supporter of the California Sunbounce system. It is lightweight, super easy to setup, and rolls into itself for storage and transport, making it one of the most versatile reflectors on the market.

However, the problem with the system is its cost: it is expensive! Even though I’ve owned my Micro Mini for almost 10 years, it is hard to justify the expense.

Normally the unit costs $189.00, but I just saw a huge price drop on the BH Photo website to $107.00 for the 20 x 30 silver/white:

This is a simple technique that I use all the time. The Actor headshot requires you to add borders to images and names to the bottom of your headshot so the casting director knows right away who you are.

Adding borders is simple. Here is how I do it:

Here is my image ready to be cropped. As I need to make an 8×10 final image, I crop my image to a specific size first:

Here I chose the Crop tool and set my parameters to Width 7.5 and Height 9 inches. I chose this size at it allows me to add my border perfectly for an 8×10:

I set my crop and then hit ok:

Here is my image cropped and ready for my white border:

To add the border, go to Image>Canvas Size and click to get the size box up:

Here I choose my width to be 8 inches and height to be 9.5 inches. The height gives me a continuous border that is the same size on all four sides.

Where it says Anchor, keep all the arrows pointing out from the center, which is my image.

On the bottom of the box where is says Canvas Extension Color, I chose white but you can choose black or gray as well:

Here is the image with the continuous border:

Now I go back to Image>Canvas Size, click again, and then change Height to 10 and Anchor to showing all the bottom and right and left sides. This allows me to change my height on the bottom only:

Here is my image in the 8×10 format with a 1″ border on the bottom and 1/2″ on three sides:

Now I go to the Text box and set my font, set my text size, and then color to add the name on the lower right corner of the image:

Here is the final ready to be saved as and delivered to the client:

Here are the before and after’s:

You can add a border to any image and set the bottom a bit thicker so that you can add a name or title or anything else you need.

I supply my actors with both images so they can use them for castings and in their book if needed.

I’m heading to Boston this weekend to teach The Headshot using all small flashes, but recently I’ve become addicted to natural light, natural beauty, and NO Photoshop.

Here is a pic I pulled from the archive that totally exemplifies that look.

Stacey worked for me a while back at a workshop and we shot in late afternoon sun. This time of day, also known as the Golden Hour, is best shot right before, during, and right after sunset.

This shot was taken just as the sun dipped below the houses to camera left. The light bouncing off of the sand, as we were on the beach, coupled with the cool background, produced a simple shot without any external modifiers.

When I shoot this kind of look, I choose these settings:

Aperture Priority between f/4 and f/5.6

ISO boosted to give me a good working shutter speed. I have no issues going to ISO 1200 or more to get a shutter of at least 1/125 so everything is sharp.

Also, I’m into natural beauty. This image had a contrast adjustment in Capture One and that is it. NO PHOTOSHOP at all.

While speed lights and strobes are awesome, why pay for and lug all that gear when natural light does the job every time!

That’s it for today. If you are coming to Boston, I can’t wait to meet you!

When shooting outside in natural light with a reflector, I pretty much shoot in Aperture Priority and use Exposure Compensation to get the correct exposure. I like to control my Depth of Field this way and always get great results.

However, you must be aware of your shutter speed. If you shoot at f/5.6 and the light causes your shutter to be low, like 1/100 and you add 2/3 of a stop of exposure compensation, then your shutter may go to 1/60 which may not be fast enough. So you need to be aware of that and adjust ISO from 100 to 200 or 400 to get a faster shutter to freeze the action. Remember, you move, the client moves, the earth moves, so it is necessary to have a shutter speed fast enough to counter all of these movements.

Also, while this is not a RAW versus JPEG argument, always shoot in RAW as you can adjust your exposure up or down by up to 3 stops and save an image.

For today, I shot this natural light headshot of Shaza at Unique on Saturday. I had left this station to set up another lighting station for the workshop attendees and came back to take a few more frames and didn’t change my exposure back to my original settings for this shot.

So this shot is about 1 stop overexposed:

While I like the look, here is a screenshot of the image in Capture One Pro, my RAW converter. You can see the clipped highlights. While I am not concerned about the background, it is the face that is losing detail:

But because I shot in RAW, I was able to pull back the exposure almost 1 full stop to correct the image:

Now the image looks like the others in the set that were correctly exposed. However, I though to myself, why correct it? I like the overexposed high key look and as long as I like the image, why not try to keep it.

My solution and the solution I teach to everyone is that if you don’t like an image or have a mistake, swap the image to Black and White. Black and White has a certain elegance that color lacks. Without the noise of color in the way, black and white images reveal a beauty that sometimes color cannot.

I simply went to the Presets in Capture One Pro and chose a high contrast black and white conversion and voila, a beautiful high key black and white image that I fell in love with:

By converting to b/w and pushing contrast a bit, I have this beautiful b/w image.

So for today, keep your mistakes. Don’t immediately delete them as they may be able to be saved and turned into art.

Last Saturday’s workshop at Unique Photo dealt with taming hard sunlight. As photographers, we need to learn how to use every light source at our disposal. If we shoot in hard light, then we need to see and use hard light or know how to diffuse it to get the best result for our client.

I like to use my scrim to control hard sunlight. Some clients have crazy schedules, so shooting at noon on a sunny day is the only time they have. So we need to understand how to get the shot “in the can” and please our client.

But I wanted to use my CS frame as a scrim, or light diffuser. When I saw the cost of a 1 stop scrim textile, at $158.00, I cringed. So I headed to my local Marshall’s and got a Shower Curtain for $5.99 and strung it across the CS frame.

But, just Google DIY Scrims and you’ll come across a bunch of online tutorials on how to build portable scrims of all sizes on-the-cheap using PVC Pipe and fabric from a craft store for anywhere from $20-$50.00 depending on size. This is the move. Don’t spend more than you have to!!

Using scrims is easy, simply place the diffusion in between the sun or light source and your subject.

And here’s the setup. As this was only a headshot, I used a piece of white masonite from my local home center as the background. The sun is directly overhead for a hair and separation light, the scrim is overhead blocking the sun, and the white reflector is directly underneath our model, Shaza:

Used in this set up, the CS scrim is unwieldy, so I used my Matthews C-Stands, Avenger Boom arm, and 3 15 pd weight bags to keep it all steady. A slight breeze picked up during the shoot, so the weight bags kept everything stable.

Here is another shot from the workshop.

The scrim is one of the most simple yet versatile tools in your kit. They can be built cheaply and used all over. You can harness the power of the sun or just shoot a light through it. Whatever the case, scrims are a great and simple way to control your light.

Many thanks to Shaza Lauren for modeling at the workshop and to Unique Photo for having me in to teach at their annual Camera Show.

I’m leaving in a few minutes to run my presentation and workshops at Unique Photo in Fairfield, NJ.

If you are in the neighborhood, check it out. Tonight is a shooting presentation, tomorrow is a full shooting workshop. Want to build your portfolio and work with two different models under multiple lighting techniques, then join in the fun!

The other day I worked with Emily and we did a few glamour headshots. I love this lighting look as it is clean and bright and just plain old fun.

I shot a Hensel 500 WS strobe into a Phottix Luna beauty dish with diffusion panel. The silver reflector below is a California Sunbounce Sun Mover attached to a Matthews Hollywood grip arm. The back light is another Hensel strobe with a 20 degree grid to control spill right behind her head.

Nikon D3, 105 f/2 DC lens

Exposure: 1/125 @ f/9, ISO 200, WB Daylight

Remember, when shooting for glamour shots, you need to overexpose the face by about 2/3 of a stop of light. The original exposure was 1/125 @ f/11, but this produced a darker image in the shadows. I overexposed by 2/3 with aperture and went to f/9. You need to be careful as you need to brighten the image but not clip highlights. At 2/3 overexposure, you should be just about right.